Christmas Lights
by book-thievery
Summary: "What am I doing, here, talking to a man who no longer exists? First sign of insanity, they say. Or first sign of loss. Sometimes...the two are one and the same." An AU Christmas special; the Doctor braves Trenzalore alone, and Clara is left to pick through the rubble of the life she unknowingly built around him. These are the letters she writes to him, to a dead man, to a ghost.
1. A Book in a Tree and Questions Abound

**A/N So this was originally supposed to be part of my oneshot collection thing, but it grew and grew and now it's this. A Christmas regeneration story. Sort of. As with the other stories in my oneshot collection, it comes with a song. Christmas Lights by Coldplay to be exact. Have a listen, and maybe cry. I did.**

**The following is written in Clara's point of view. Second person. Will be about three or four chapters, depending on me. Rated T for swearing, whouffle and general paranoia. Please tell me what you thought in a review, read and enjoy!**

•••

_Christmas night, another fight_  
_Tears we cried, a flood_  
_Got all kinds of poison in, poison in my blood_  
_Took my feet to Oxford Street, trying to right a wrong_  
_Just walk away those windows sing_  
_But I can't believe he's gone_

_When you're still waiting for the snow to fall_  
_It doesn't really feel like Christmas at all_

_Up above candles on air flicker_  
_Oh they flicker and they flow_  
_And I am up here holding on to all those chandeliers of hope_  
_And like some drunken in this city_  
_I go singing out of tune_  
_Singing how I've always loved you, darling_  
_And I always will_

_Oh when you're still waiting for the snow to fall_  
_It doesn't really feel like Christmas at all_

_Still waiting for the snow to fall_  
_It doesn't really feel like Christmas at all_

_Those Christmas lights_  
_Light up the streets_  
_Down where the sea and city meet_  
_May all your troubles soon be gone_  
_Oh Christmas lights, keep shining on_

_Those Christmas lights_  
_Light up the streets_  
_Maybe they'll bring him back to me_  
_Then all my troubles will be gone_  
_Oh Christmas lights, keep shining on_

_Oh Christmas lights_  
_Light up the streets_  
_Light up the fireworks in me_  
_May all your troubles soon be gone_  
_Those Christmas lights keep shining on_

•••

When you hear the word 'Christmas', what do you think of?

I suppose not everyone celebrates Christmas, though. But they must have other memories. Everyone does. You know, birthdays, name days, Thanksgiving, anniversaries, weddings, births, celebrations. All of that. Those days, those memories.

Of them, Christmas has always been mine. _My_ day. The best day.

But.

And there's always a but.

_Christmas_.

The word's cold now, in my mouth, you see. The memory blackened, in my mind. And the day is dead. With you.

But enough of me.

When _you_ hear that word, what do _you_ think of? Such a beautiful word, all elegant vowels shaped around slippery consonants. Said best at a shout first thing on the morning of December 25th, accompanied by a hug or a kiss or a skip of excitement.

What does that word make you think about?

Presents, I bet. Neat little boxes shining with big red bows. Irregular shapes patched with Santa paper and half a roll of Sellotape. The perfect gift from that perfect person nestled right under all the others and showered in pine needles.

Or food. Of course, food. Elaborate turkey dinners done with rich gravy and homemade Yorkshire pudding. Grandma's trademark potato salad, all gone barely ten minutes into the night. Half-baked cookies courtesy of some proud younger cousin, eaten with pretend praise but very real smiles.

Or maybe you're religious, well, not _you_, I suppose. But lots of people. I used to love going to church when I was younger, with mum at the midnight mass. On the good years, winter would tap its nails along the stained-glass windows, as if wishing to be among the happy people rugged up inside. I'd try to listen to the priest, I would, but usually I'd spend the warm late-night hour gazing up at the dead lungs of the church ceiling, imagining the building heaving with breath and life, gargoyles and paintings and windows coming alive to wish us the season's greetings.

Or maybe it's the _people_ that you think of. I know I do. The wistful great aunt who'd give me a spider web's kiss on the cheek before tottering off to reminisce over old photo albums. The pair of god-awful twins who I couldn't help but love, stealing meringues from the table, tearing up party hats and peeking at their gifts too early. My parents sharing the same slice of Chrissy pudding, spitting out old pennies and competing for whoever got the oldest one.

And then there are the memories. The shadows, the ghosts. An empty chair or two, a missing place on the table for someone's signature dish, a person's eyes constantly flitting about as if to catch sight of another, even if the other was not there and had not been for many years.

I remember being that pair of eyes. I remember glaring at the chocolate soufflé some well-meaning uncle had baked, wanting to cast it off the table and scream. I remember seeing my father sitting surrounded by people but somehow alone, taking the last bite of a piece of Christmas pudding and dropping a shiny coin into the bowl without even a brief inspection of the minting date. I remember the distinct increase in gifts labeled with my and Dad's names, and the distinct lack of ones with my mother's.

Sometimes, I think I remember the absence of my mother at those once joyful Christmas dinners more than I remember her presence. Sometimes I think I focus more on the shadows, the memories, the ghosts, than the living and breathing souls.

You're a dark and weighty shadow, Doctor. You're a frightening ghost.

Or maybe it isn't the people that you think of. Maybe it's the decorations, the mistletoe, the tinsel and the tree. Clusters of golden baubles reflecting your own morphed and alienated face. Strings of fairy lights passing rainbows about the branches on which they're hung. Old kindergarten decorations made of coloured pasta and pipe cleaners, alongside century-old family heirlooms and precious glass angels.

Maybe – what else is there?– do you think of the stories? The swapped tales of incidents in the supermarket, crazy chance meetings with a celebrity in a hotel bathroom, long-winded recounts of week-long jaunts to France, Canada, the Phillipines, or the town no one's heard about in a a forgotten Welsh moor. The stories that are told so passionately and so often that everyone butts in with their own continuations and comments. The tall tales that everyone knows are codswallop but still laugh along with anyway.

Maybe Christmas reminds you of none of these things, or all of them. But it's what it makes _me_ think about. It's my memories, leading back year after year, from now until even before my fathoming.

I loved Christmas, I did. I loved it, even after my mother couldn't be there for it I still loved it. Sometimes the happiest things are tainted with a bit of sadness, sometimes the best memories are bittersweet. And Christmas, to me, was a sanctuary, a celebration, a beautiful glowing flurry of snow and joy and love and sound.

Yes, it's fair to say that Christmas was my favourite day of the year. I wouldn't have missed it for the world.

But–and there's always a but–to erase this last Christmas from existence, or at least from memory, I would hand over my heart and soul. In a neatly wrapped box, no less, complete with pretty silver bow.

But, then, I think that perhaps I already have.

Is that what I've done? Is that what I've been doing these past months with you, the very thing I was so focussed on avoiding? Have I already relinquished those parts of me? Given them so thoughtlessly away?

If so, I've been given nothing in return.

•••

You're probably wondering what this is all about. Tattered old book in a waterlogged old chest, left squatting in the ribcage of a long-dead tree. Actually, knowing you, you probably aren't wondering at all. You probably know _exactly_ what this is about, and _exactly_ what it means.

I'm sure, by now, you've worked out who is writing this. Was the Old High Gallifreyan I scratched into the lid enough? Of course it was, who else knows that script these days. Took me ages to remember enough to write that, though. Months of scraping my brain, picking through all those memories for that one Clara who lived a decade or two on your own planet Gallifrey.

Go back and read it again. Again. Put the book down, pick up the chest and read it.

_Run you clever boy, and remember._

At least, that's what it's supposed to say. I don't think I got the Gallifreyan equivalent for 'b' right. Or the 'ou' sound, for that matter. And I messed up the 'clever' bit. You get the idea.

I'll tell you later what I meant by those words. It's not just the phrase I knew would catch your eye, it means something more. Keep reading. Keep reading.

You'll recognise this place, I hope. This place you've found this tree, this chest, this book. Not with fond memories, and I'm sorry about that. More sorry than you can know. But this is the only place I could be almost certain you would come back to, if you came back at all. So this is left here, in a chest, in a tree, in the place where you once died.

You already know the intention of this letter, or book, or mess of words I've managed to scrawl onto paper. You worked it out paragraphs ago. But I'll write them here anyway, because I want you to hear my voice saying them in your head.

1. I'm angry.

This is the best reason, I like this reason the most. Imagine me shouting this part at you. Cringe a little bit in regret. Good. Because I am angry. I am so angry. I want to punch your goddamn big chin and smash your stupid sonic and tear your TARDIS into scrap metal. Figuratively, anyway. Mostly I just want you to read this all in my voice, picture me shouting it at you. Add some swearing in for me, too. Colourful as you like.

2. I'm sorry.

I don't like this reason at all, but it's true and probably more valid than the previous one. I'm dreadfully sorry. Not sure what for, exactly, but I am. And here I am, writing this.

3. I miss you.

I hate this reason. I hate it a lot. But it's truer than the others, even the hundreds that I haven't written down. I hope you can infer those other reasons from the following pages, but this is the big one. I miss you, you bastard. Yeah, that's right. You're a bastard. You're a _fucking bastard_.

If you're alive, that is.

If you're alive.


	2. Christmas Cheer and Death's Bared Teeth

**A/N Hello everyone! Sorry for the late update, stuff happened. But I promise that this will all be published before the Christmas special airs, cause afterwards its not going to be valid anyway. Oh well. Thank you so so much for all your reviews, they make me smile so much and I love you all. It will really make my week I you could do the kindness of dropping me another one...please and thank you? Also, to that Guest: yes I do have a tumblr. Unfortunately for my social life and general productivity. URL's on my profile if you feel obliged to check it out.**

**Now, without further ado, onward to chapter two!**

**•••**

Guess where I am sitting, as I write this. Just guess.

_Your flat_, you say._ Sitting cross-legged on your bed like you always do when you're thinking. Or perched on the tip of the rotting stump, beside the ribcage tree with lungs of bracken and a wooden chest for a heart. In the park near your house, the one you took me to on that day you had a cold and weren't in the mood for adventuring. Maybe you're in the TARDIS! Maybe I've come back, maybe you've no need to write any further!_

Idiot. You know yourself, don't you? You haven't come back. Whoever you are, whatever you are, you haven't returned to me.

But what am I saying? I'm giving you a voice from my own mind. Giving you words you might have spoken, and dreaming up a fitting reply. Writing letters to a man who no longer exists. First sign of insanity, they say. Or first sign of loss.

Sometimes I think the two are one and the same.

You won't have guessed, where I am. I can barely believe that my feet have led me here myself. Enough guessing, now. Enough games. We played too many of them, for too long, for too little. Enough.

I'm in a graveyard.

Mostly that presence is physical; the mess of weeds and strangled grass crushed beneath my feet, the cold and weary gravestone I'm resting my back against, the air so heavy with age and silence that it's sagging right into the earth. It could be metaphorical, too, I suppose, but let's not get into that.

It's not like I never visit graveyards. I go to this one often enough. Place some fresh flowers on Mum's grave, stand a minute and think. Every six months or so I come, more often if Dad accidentally calls me Ellie when talking over the phone or if I see myself in photo albums and find my own smile morphing into hers.

I don't know why I'm here today, though. I just wanted to get out of the house, to find someone, to see something. But my troublesome feet directed me here, which is more a place of loss, and blindness, than the opposite.

I made sure to find the oldest grave I could, one so old the name and date once engraved upon it has melted and smoothed across the stone and been replaced by decades of afternoon sun and scratchy lichen. I don't know why. I don't know why. But then, I don't know the reason for more than half the world's happenings these days, so how am I to explain away my own?

There's no one else within at least three blocks of where I sit, for the cemetery sprawls far around, overwhelmed and overflowing with the weight that death heaves. Being the only living, sentient thing within this space is strangely peaceful. There's a tranquility about it, sitting alongside the obvious crawling creepiness that you'd expect to find in such a place. Or maybe it's the same, the eerie nothing is like a void, muffling and swallowing anything that could threaten its still surface.

But then I look down again, at these words in my own careful hand, addressed to a 'you' who won't answer. A you who is the Doctor, and a you who may as well be dust and dead memories in the wooden coffin six feet beneath me.

I think about you, I think about what—who—you were, I think about who _I_ was, with you. I think, I think too long and too hard and too fast and too deep. I think, and the silence is gone. The comfort is past. The peace is soaked into the tear-stained dirt.

Now many of the gravestones are cracked and crumbling, commemorating the lives of forgotten people and times best left alone. Names have been chipped away with time and wind and careless shoes. Skeletons without faces nor pasts nor people to put to them, and even the memories are dead in this place.

Now my skin shivers in the cold breeze that ancient years blow, my bones ache with a weariness that would sooner take me in death than in sleep. There is a sun glowering down at me in the early morning sky, no warmth nor kindness in its gaze, only malice, harshness. No birds, no bees, no bodies but mine and the ones that no longer count.

Now as I think, I remember, the cemetery is not a cemetery any longer. The gravestones are not gravestones, they are decaying, rotting teeth. Fangs and molars sprouting from roots made of bones and bitten wood.

I sit, swaying against one such crumbling offender, and imagine this place swallowing me whole. Crunching me up for breakfast, body and soul lost in a maw rich with the losses of the living and the dangers of the dead.

No, I don't imagine. I don't think that I imagine.

I hope.

•••

It was going to be just me and my dad that Christmas.

But that was okay.

My two remaining grandparents were splashing out on their retirement savings to spend December careening around Europe. It was their subtle way of telling us that they knew they only had a few more years left in them and wanted to spend them wisely. Or unwisely, depending on how you look at things. They'd taken most of my cousins and their children with them, to provide the youth that they were lacking in.

Then there was Aunt Sara, who was loath to make the trek in the stormy weather we were having, and her husband, Uncle Richard, who had sort of stopped the Christmas thing after mum died. She loved Christmas just as much, if not more, than I did, and her death took its toll on him in an irreversible way.

The remainder simply preferred to stay at home, go out with other extended family, or get drunk with old friends at the bar. That was okay. Just me and dad. That was fine.

It was still Christmas.

And then, out of the blue, Aunt Sara rapped on the door with her stone hard knuckles, and a barrage of children streamed through into the front passageway. Well, three. But one duo of cheeky eleven year olds and a kindergarten-aged girl fond of climbing things added up to at least a smallish barrage.

Sara was quick to explain that 'the weather had suddenly turned' (even though it hadn't) and she'd decided she didn't want us eating a whole great turkey on our own. Dad shot me a secret smile, and we both knew that she was just lonely staying at home with three crazed kids and a husband who didn't believe in Christmas anymore. Which was fine. Brilliant, actually. It felt more like the old Christmases, with children running about and old uncles heaving massive laughs and doubtful cousins teasing your life choices.

It was hours later, after presents and a slushy snowball fight and a half-hearted lunch in anticipation of the feast that was to be dinner, that I heard it.

You know the noise. The sort of wheezing, groaning whine, rising and falling into a final _boom_. Of course you know it. Of course you do.

Anyway, I heard it. We all heard it. Though only the kids looked up, and only I went to the door.

There you were. Quite literally, out of the blue.

I wasn't expecting it, no. The Doctor, joining my family for Christmas dinner? But when I saw that bluest blue box parked in the shattering of hard snow and cold rain, I realised that I had been hoping for it all along.

You stepped out of the TARDIS with a grin and a flurry and a pair of reindeer antlers, and I ran up to meet you with a laugh and a hug and a comment about your flashy Christmas headwear. There was no question as to whether you would be staying, you never even had to ask and I never even had to answer.

The introductions were, at best, slightly awkward. At worst, they made me want to kick you in the shin when no one was looking.

The trouble was, Dad thought you were my boyfriend. Even made a comment about the mistletoe he'd hung above the doorway when you introduced yourself. It really didn't help that the next thing you did was laugh and sling your arm around my shoulder, kissing the side of my temple. That part was especially detrimental to the label of 'extremely close but definitely platonic friends' that I was going to propose.

So then that set me up to be standing at the head of the living room before the stragglers of Christmas Day, telling them all that "this is the Doctor, my _boyfriend._"

Later, I took you aside into the corridor, fixed you with my best glare and a snap of "what the hell was that all about?"

You replied with indifference (that was what _really_ irked me), "Play along, I don't want to be slapped by anyone's family members this Christmas. Really, it happens quite a bit more than you'd expect."

I was almost sure at this point that you were going to be slapped by _several_ family members, including myself, and told you so.

"Come on, Clara," you said earnestly. "It's _Christmas_! The time of facades and pretend, and the time I tend to get smacked by people's mothers. You don't have to do anything! I won't...ah, _kiss_ you, if that's what you're worried about. No, no. And besides, you did the same to _me_ one Christmas, if I recall!"

"That wasn't me!" I was hoping to heaven above that you wouldn't hear the anxiety, the slipping lies, the earnestness to prove that this 'pretending' _wasn't_ twisting my mind every which way.

You scoffed lightly, wringing your hands, obviously exasperated with my disinclination. "No need to worry! I'll be a good fake human boyfriend." Then you turned off towards the dining room, straightening your bow tie with a wink. "Smile for the cameras!"

I laughed at that. Or, I pretended to. It seemed I would be wearing double the facades that day. Both contradicting the other. You believed it, though. My laugh, my irritated words, my breezy smirk. All to mask the fact that the idea of being your boyfriend for a day sounded much more appealing than it should've. You believed it all, though. You always believed it.

Until you didn't.

We started on dinner, the great feast, 'fit for an army of starved Sontarans' as you said. Dad and George were still trying to figure you out at this point, although they'd accepted that you had a right to be there. Still, they gave you quizzical looks at the mention of 'Sontarans'.

The twins were on salads, Dad attempting to replicate a couple of basic hot meal recipes courtesy of Jamie Oliver, Aunt Sara was appointed dessert duty, and the main piece was allocated to me. Even though I had repeatedly insisted that I had never cooked a turkey before, nor did I have the slightest inkling how.

As it turned out, you proved yourself to be quite the accomplished cook. I probably shouldn't have been surprised, and you looked rather irked when I laughed in disbelief, but it is true that your clumsy limbs don't look to be at home in a kitchen.

And they weren't. You may have known just the right amount of spices to sprinkle a turkey with, but the Doctor and ovens aren't a particularly impressive combination. Especially when a sonic screwdriver is added to the mix. Dad wasn't that happy when it was discovered that the roils of black smoke weren't _supposed_ to be seeping out the oven door.

And then you suggested the TARDIS. Rather too loudly. I'm almost certain no one believed my cover-up about the 'TARDIS' being a nickname for one of your friends who lived in the same apartment block. What else was I supposed to say? I was running out of excuses for you, and your much too _alien_ quirks were certainly not helping.

So we cooked the turkey in the TARDIS. Pretended you had the spare key to some imaginary friend's flat, yet another facade that was severely doubtable. When in reality I was just yelling at your spaceship's disobedient oven and trying to see if it obeyed a click of the fingers just like the TARDIS doors did.

The whole saga ended with me collapsing on the kitchen floor, skin scalded and ego severely ruffled, to watch you race about with trays and tongs and chopping boards. Sonic and professional chef skills and all. Fine, it was delicious. I admit it. At least, more delicious than the charred mess _I_ would have managed to procure.

Christmas dinner started the way it always did, with the twins stealing half a bowl of mars bar slice and wolfing it down while the rest of us set the table. And then the crackers, of course. Used to scare the hell out of me, those things, though I loved them.

That was always one of my favourite Christmas moments. With the whole family sat around the table in complete silence, arms crossed to clutch the ends of another's cracker. All counting softly together, one, two, three, _crack_!

And then is the moment Christmas really begins, with a bang and a spark and a deluge of laughter. This time was no different, and Christmas blossomed fully into life just as it always did.

The contents of my Christmas cracker, which I had to retrieve from where it had flown across the table, was a spinning top and a bright purple paper hat. You got a twisted piece of string and a crown of fluoro green. Which you were, as I recall, rather unsatisfied with.

"I am thoroughly underwhelmed by the contents of this Christmas cracker, Clara," you said, with a frown at your flimsy prize. "It's even frayed at the ends!"

I laughed and handed you my spinning top, which you took with a grin before fixing your green hat on top of my head and patting it.

"You're missing half of the Christmas colours," you murmured. "Nice cardigan, by the way."

I haven't worn that jacket since.

Will – the oldest of the twins by two minutes, as he never stopped reminding us – challenged you to a spinning top battle a bit further into tea. It ended messily, with two bits of brightly coloured plastic landing in the coleslaw and a bottle of red wine spilt all over the carpet. Nobody cared, though, not even Sara.

It was Christmas, after all.

One of the moments I most remember about that night was the one where you stood up at your place at the table, clutching a piece of paper in front of you. You squared your shoulders and cleared your throat as if you were about to make an inspiring speech, but what came out of your mouth was anything but.

"What do you call a bird that's out of breath?"

All eyes on you. The clinking of forks on plates. The rustling of paper crowns.

"A _puffin_!" This was where you flung up your arms like you were the funniest comedian the world had ever seen, and the whole table groaned loud enough loud enough to make your reindeer ears droop.

You sat down, mouth twisted into a pout. "I thought it was funny," you whispered to me, and, though you were wearing a pretend frown, your eyes were practically glowing with mirth.

And then Dad thought he'd be able to tell a better one (he couldn't), and the dinner soon dissolved into the two of you tearing open cracker after cracker, torturing the rest of us with the corny jokes we'd all heard a billion times before.

There were only so many snarky remarks one could bring to mind in answer to every cheesy one-liner you two spouted, and eventually the collective groans became tiring. Soon the whole little table was chuckling and giggling and laughing outright, mostly at you and your exaggerated attempts to make knock knock jokes funny. You of all people should know that such a feat is against the very fundamental laws of this universe.

Just a hop, skip and a jump and dinner was over, chocolate tart just a couple of crumbs in a pan, conversation dying down to awkward fiddlings with the tablecloth.

It only occurred to me then, watching you fidget among the quiet murmurings, that I had no idea why you were there. Why you were sitting beside me at my dad's dining room table, wearing reindeer ears and an over-exaggerated sense of Christmas spirit.

Why did you come?

Not a particularly Doctor-like thing to do. Domesticity and all that...it's not your style. Don't try to deny it, I know you. I know you better than anyone.

It took me a while to work it out. I mean, you're a Time Lord. You're the _Doctor_. And though I'd suspected, maybe even harboured some silly little hope...I'd never believed such a thing could be true.

Before Trenzalore, I had a trick, you see. Well, not a trick. A plan. A safeguard. A fallback.

Very simply, I'd promised myself that I would not fall in love with you.

I can imagine the look on your face if I said that to you in person. But I can't imagine what you might have said back.

The truth was, you were captivating. Stop grinning, I know you are. Your ego'll explode if its inflated much more. Plus your chin looks bigger when you smile. Bet that put you in your place.

But that doesn't quite work, does it? I don't suppose you have that magnificent old chin any longer. Take a look in the mirror and imagine up a fitting tease for me.

Creeping back onto topic, from the first moment you turned up on the doorstep – okay, maybe not the first. In the first you were a crazed monk with funny hair who could possibly have been a door-knocking serial killer. How about from the moment that I woke up? I remember that all too clearly.

I looked down at you in the driveway with my computer and your electronics and your big blue box and I was captivated. Not in _that_ way—not at first—but I wanted to know who you were, where you were going, why you were there. It took me a very long time to find the answers to those questions, but I did. It turned out that I only needed to tear myself into a thousand pieces and suffer through the pain of a million memories that were not mine.

I'm not resentful, don't think that. I wouldn't change what I did that day at Trenzalore. Because there is a reason that I stepped into your timeline, there is a very good reason.

My trick, my plan, my safeguard, failed.

Make of that what you will. But it isn't a flimsy trivial thing to throw behind you, to run away from like you do everything else. Because that's what _I_ used to do, and it doesn't work. Not even for Time Lords, I'd wager.

Do you remember the Tower of London? The gallery? You probably recall the events of that day even better than I do. I should hope so, I should hope that you don't forget it for the rest of your life. However long that may be.

That was the decider. The events of that day. You, and the hero, you, and the warrior. That was when I decided that you needed me just as much as I needed you, even if you weren't aware of the needing. That was when I decided to leave my trick behind.

I know why you came. I know why you parked your box in the snow, I know why you cooked our turkey in your TARDIS, I know why you sat at the dinner table and read excruciating pun after excruciating pun to the rest of us.

The same reason I was there. The same reason my dad was there. The same reason Aunt Sara and her kids were there. The same reason anyone gathers together on Christmas Day, surrounded by the scent of pine and the crackle of wrapping paper and the warm glow of many people.

Hope.

That's Christmas, in four letters.

Hope for the future, hope for one's family, hope for the person that next year will make of one. Hope for a home, hope for some joy, hope for a time of relief and celebration. Hope for the sake of hoping.

You had _hope_.

And, for you, hope equals happiness.

But also, for you, happiness equals tragedy of equal potency.


	3. A Promise of Again and How it is Broken

**A/N hey again. Not much to say today but...thank you for all your reviews. I hope you can spare the seconds that they take, because they make me so happy! :) **

•••

I wish I hadn't done it, now. Well, sort of wish. It was something that had been flickering at the edge of me for weeks, and I could tell it had been doing the same for you. That Christmas night, I'd indulged it. Drunk on laughter, high on euphoria, I'd given in to myself for just a moment or two.

The interesting thing was, so had _you_.

Aunt Sara and co had already trundled off home, through the gluggy slushing snow that promised the thunderstorm she had been hoping to avoid driving through. Dad was busying himself with cleanup, having very pointedly allowed us some space to see each other off. You know parents. Or, I suppose, you probably don't.

But there's one thing that I _know_ you know. There's one thing that I was absolutely _certain_ I could see glittering through the shutters of your mind.

It could have been an emotion. Or a wish. Or a thought. It could have been a hope. Or an inhibition. Or any number and combination of those things. But it was this one minuscule thing that changed everything. Irrevocably.

It was your eyes.

They looked different.

They were clear. Shining. Pure.

Unfettered. Unviolated. Undisrupted.

Just...young. They looked so _young_. In a way that they hadn't since the day we saved Gallifrey, and not once before that.

And I probably should tell you the reason why I did what I did next. You deserve that, at least. I can say that it wasn't because of the fighting warmth of your hand clasping mine. It wasn't because of the echoes of your smiling voice still chasing in and out of my ears. It wasn't because of the memory of a thousand touches, a thousand hugs, a thousand kisses on the cheek or forehead. It wasn't because of the tower of hidden wants and desires that I'd been building steadily beneath me, threatening to topple and spill me down back to earth.

Not really. They were just contributing factors.

When it comes down to the bones of it, it was because of those /eyes/. It was because you looked young. And it was because I wanted you to stay that way.

That's why I did it. That's why I finally did it. That's why I let loose what I knew, what I'd known for _months_, was clawing at you from the inside, and let it join what was howling back to it from inside me.

Because I didn't want you to have to lose that youth, that youth that so defied your physical age.

Funny how things happen like that, looking back.

And you know what happened next, of course. Isn't such an easy thing for me to forget, and I know the same stands for you.

You know what happened next.

•••

_Your hand is wrapped around my freezing fingers, your presence wrapped around my freezing everything else. How can you stand there and not shiver? How can you smile and not feel your lips freeze? _

_Maybe it's because there's something warming you, from the inside. Maybe it's Time Lord biology. Maybe I'm just imagining the comforting heat of your skin. _

_Whatever conversation we were having has long since drifted away with the light snow, melted somewhere in the grass. They say silence is golden, but that's not true. Silence doesn't shine, it doesn't dominate, it doesn't glow and demand honour. It simply sits, it waits, it whispers, and if silence were a colour it would be the clearest of blue..._

_I can't seem to remember what we were talking about, or what we were doing, or why I'm still just looking at you and you're looking back. I can only recall the breeziness of your tone, the lightness of your breath, the fluttering of your laugh like a bird let loose from its cage. Your eyes are shining, untainted, unshadowed, and I can now fully see the changes that finding Gallifrey had blessed upon you. _

_You are more beautiful than I've ever seen you. _

_I creep my hands up to the back of your head, standing on my tiptoes to kiss the place where your hair meets your forehead. I can imagine your simple smile, and I don't have to see it. _

_I only tilt my head a little, letting my hands fall around your neck, the resolution already made. There's no denying it now, no hiding it, no shoving it back under the rug. It's there, and I kiss you. _

_I may be surprised at myself, but I am even more surprised when you, after only seconds of petrification, inch forward to settle your hands around the curve of my neck and jaw, and most surprised when the cold nibbles and the times passes and neither of us have moved away. _

_I can't see your eyes, except for millisecond flutters in which your eyelids are shut, but I can imagine them. _

_They are glowing, shining, full and empty at once, and bright in a way that has never before been seen in you. Not this you. _

_We are paused, separated, raised above all else. But not everything is us, however much it may seen otherwise. So, still, the cold eats, the snow peaks, and the time creeps slowly by._

•••

A little later, you apologised. How very _you_ of you. I remember it being quite a stumbled apology, ridden with ums and ahs and plenty of over-enthusiastic hand gestures. I just smiled.

"Careful there. What do they say? Sorry means you won't do it again," was my reply. At which you, promptly, shut up.

I linked my arm in yours, shuffling closer against the increasingly malicious chill. I remember having to think of something witty to say, or risk accidentally blurting out something I knew I'd regret.

"I'll assume that's a promise of 'again'," I said, and it was supposed to be the witty line, at the time. But now it's turned more into the something I regret, because...well, there _was_ no 'again'.

_There __**was**__ no again. _

You dragged behind just a little as I trudged forward, before seeming to gather yourself. With a click and a flourish, the TARDIS doors swung open, and flakes of halfhearted snow were lit up in blue.

You then spun out of my grasp, sweeping the reindeer antlers off of your head and presenting them to me.

"A Christmas gift," you grinned, fitting them on my head. Your hands were still impossibly warm when you tucked a few stray hairs behind them.

"Should've told me we were doing presents. I could've got you a new fez."

"You've already given..." Here you stopped talking abruptly, straightened up a little. "How about you and I take a trip to 18th century Morocco? You can pick one out for me. Haven't been given a Christmas present for years."

"Wednesday, right? And you might've told me you were coming today! Fairly sure no one believed our cover story."

"Well, _I_ thought I was a great boyfriend. Fake! Fake boyfriend," you scrambled to emphasise those last words. That made me smile again.

I smiled a lot that day, didn't I? Laughed more than I had in months. Felt happier than I'd been in years. It's like that saying: it's always darkest before the dawn. But the opposite. It's always brightest before the dusk.

I wanted to kiss you again before you left. But, you know, uncertainties always get in the way. I'm glad I didn't. I wish I hadn't done it in the first place, actually. Just another mistake of mine that can never be fixed.

"A merry Christmas to all," you called, looking up at the sky as if you owned the stars. You swept an arm out before you and bowed, one hand still anchoring you to the TARDIS doorway as you did so. "And to all a good night!"

With a wink, a smile, and an echoing _vworp vworp vworp_, you were gone. I stood in the snow for only a second or two longer, contemplating the strange euphoria blossoming in my chest.

If I could go back in your TARDIS and speak to that younger me, I would want to say many things. But I wouldn't, instead I would simply grab her arm and be forced yell the things that I _didn't_ really want her to hear.

_Run, run!_ I'd say, _Forget him, forget it all, run far away and don't come back here, tonight or any other!_

But—knowing me—even then, I probably wouldn't listen.

•••

Looking back, now, is more than a little strange.

Well, not strange. That's just one of my substitute words. Like 'tired', my substitute for 'grieving' or 'worried' or 'terrible'. Or the phrase 'I'm fine', which I use quite often as a substitute for almost everything.

I mean that this, remembering...it's not the kind of thing you'd want to remember.

I've always been a nostalgic sort of person, some of my most treasured possessions have been my mother's ring, her leaf and book. Even now, there is not one day in which she does not grace my thoughts. Some might think of such a thing as torture, to see a loved one constantly in mind but not in body. But it...comforts me, I suppose. To know that I'm not forgetting her. To know that I'm keeping her alive.

But you're different.

Maybe it's because I tried so hard not to need you. Maybe it's because you didn't try at all, you just needed me and we both knew that. Maybe it's because I love...loved..._love_ you in a very different way to how I loved my mother.

Every day that slumps tiredly into the next, busy mornings and lonely afternoons and silent evenings, I remember you.

The old you.

Just like how the image of my mother's smile accompanies every sunny morning, so do you.

The coffee machine in the staff room sounds just like your sonic screwdriver. I drink only tea there now.

One of the geography professors wore a waistcoat and bow tie the other day. He even had the nerve to jokingly ask me if his 'new look' suited him. I told him that no, it didn't, and daggy old-man suits were more his style.

Dad called this morning, told me about a twinge in his hip. I suggested that he go see a doctor. It took ten whole seconds to choke the words out. Even then, I had to hang up the phone before emotion stole what was left of my voice.

Only now can I see how much I actually loved you. It scares me, a little. The strength of it, not fading, not weakening, even now you're gone.

The devil in that is, the pain isn't doing so either.

•••

It was a cold and clockwork night, the evening of December 25th. Winter rose in all its ferocity, shedding its summer skin in the form of snow down to the earth. It had regained its voice and was not hesitating to use it, rattling the windows in their panes and the children in their sleep.

Time ticked as it always did, the blood-drained sun set and the pale moon rose at their own times. Seconds, minutes passed as normal, steady and full, steady and full.

On the battle that was my midnight drive home—and I was not ashamed of this, though I think I might be now—I couldn't stop smiling. I sang carols along to the radio, grinning like a middle-schooler who'd just talked to her first crush.

I'll give myself some slack here, though. We both knew that moment had been gathering in the space between us for months, it was only a matter of when it would surface. And I mean, you were a great kisser. You're allowed to smile at that.

After an hour or so of out-of-tune renditions of Hark the Herald Angels and accidental near car crashes, my little flat actually looked like home for the first time since I'd moved in. The short stint between the car and the front door felt like a mile in the building snowstorm, and I was glad to have left the heater on despite the warnings about it possibly burning down the building.

Despite the hour, I found I could not even contemplate sleep at that moment. Perhaps it was foreshadowing of what was to come, or perhaps my mind was just fuelled by too many batteries, but I ended up curled on the couch with a hot mug of tea and a blissful collection of thoughts. The rage of snow and wind outside was in perfect contrast to the warmth and stillness I was enveloped in.

I was quite content to sit there, with a stomach full of Christmas dinner and a mind full of something much different, slowly sipping tea. I could only think of one thing that would make that moment perfect, but that one thing was probably light years away in some warped corner of the time vortex. So I was satisfied with only memories and thoughts for company, though your presence would not have been denied.

It was a strange feeling for me, then, when I heard the noise for the second time that night. The wheezing, groaning sound by which your TARDIS likes to announce its appearance. I should have felt joy, or fondness, given the circumstances of your arrival. But all there was was a slick and slimy feeling of dread.

I don't believe in premonitions, or foreshadowing, or psychic senses, or anything like that. Haven't for a long time. But I can honestly tell you that your late arrival at my flat gave me cause for hesitation, and doubt.

It's true that I would never have thought you would return that night, especially not at the dead of darkness in a blizzard. But this was more than that, this was a kind of _knowing_, of what might come, of what would come. Maybe it's that stuff—artron energy, did you call it?—that time traveller stuff that marks you as a journeyer through the fourth dimension. Maybe it was just a stupid hunch, coincidence, or a quirk of my already cluttered mind.

But I knew the very instant I glimpsed the silhouette of that blue box amid the snow that this was not a casual visit. The snow spun and whipped the air, a frenzy of winter against the wooden panels.

Already, it seemed, the world was thrashing about, screeching in protest. Already, the universe knew that it couldn't let you die.

•••


	4. Goodbye and the Number Thirteen

**A/N Hello again. Short one today (sorry). I wanted to give you guys something today (its like twelve pm here eek but that's still today! Almost...). Anyway, please leave a review if you enjoyed it, the ones some of you have already written really bring a much needed smile to my face. Thank you, and enjoy!**

•••

Hello again.

Or should I say, not a hello.

Goodbye.

Again.

It's taken me all these months to realise this. All these days of reading over my written words, again and again, scribbling and correcting and reiterating everything until it is perfect. But ugly things have no concept of perfection, so even that is an impossible task.

I understand that now. There's no one listening under the skin of these pages, there's no one waiting on the other side of this book. There's just me, me and a pencil and a sunburnt forest. Writing a letter to an address that's long been wiped off the map.

It's been a long time since I wrote here last, though. First time was in...March, maybe? April, early June? You messed up my sense of time, what with the jaunts off to distant planets, returning home minutes after I left with exhaustion enough for a month-long vacation. I think I'm actually a year or two older than any earth calendar would like me to think, so if I go grey before my time I'm blaming it on you.

Time's simple now, linear and organised. Everything happens when and where and how it's supposed to. No unpredictability, no unknown. The ordinary is slipping, warping, caving beneath me, and the only anchor I have is in my memories. I can only hope that I do not forget them.

Like I said, it's been months. It's November now, something that is particularly blatant in the red-gold forest where I sit. The same one you died in. The same one where you've found this book.

I hope.

But, like I said before, my hope used to burn bright, brighter even than the grief and the loss. Now, it's consumed all the fuel I can give it. Now, it's only a flicker. Now, it's barely there.

•••

So, it's November now. Been eleven months, eleven months since Christmas. Eleven months since your death. Your eleventh death, I mean. At least I think so. For all I know, it could have been your final death too.

Your last death.

No more Doctor.

I've had almost a year to think over this, and the more I do the more it becomes apparent that that probably _was_ your final death. I don't remember as much of my echoes as I used to, and I've tried especially to block out my life on Gallifrey, but information on the Time Lords still swims to the surface sometimes.

I remember, once, I wrote a whole bunch of Gallifreyan fruit on the grocery list. It was only when I got to the store and found that they did _not, _in fact,stock 'lunigorns' or 'royal ashk' or 'silver hews', and never had, that I realised how much of that knowledge simply sits in my mind, tucked behind school summer holidays and the recipe for spaghetti and how to jiggle the dishwasher just so to make it start properly.

It's like my brain is a weird sort of sponge, at first all the water just sits on top, spilling down the sides. That's what happened first, the nightmares and the sleepwalking and the immobilising flashbacks. And in that, a lot of the memories soaked in a bit, I think. Without my awareness. Now they hide, they wait to be unearthed, in the midst of European capital cities or my parents' birth dates.

I don't dream of them any longer, those lives. They've dissolved, that's the best way to describe it. Dissolved in the memories of _my_ life, my original life. Now they're just pain without a wound, grief without a loss, joy without logic or source. Random facts about the lost moon of Poosh strewn about next week's lesson plans.

And it was all this that led to me, one still afternoon about six months ago, remembering something very specific, as is the rarity. This _something_ was a fact. A very particular fact. A fact about Gallifreyan physiology and society. A fact that stated that Time Lords are only able to regenerate a total of twelve times. Thirteen bodies.

I thought further, and then I realised. The realisation should have made me jolt in my seat, maybe shed a tear, yell at nothing. It didn't. I think, subconsciously, I already knew. So all I did was sink back into the couch, clutch my knees to my chest, and state ahead at the space between matter.

You were number thirteen.

You should have been the eleventh, I think. Plenty of time, plenty of lives for you to live. But, being you, you were so much more complicated.

There was the one I met at the Tower of London, the ninth, if I remember rightly. Making you number twelve. That's okay. Still another regeneration, still one more chance.

But I thought harder, delved into those shattered memories like I hadn't for a long time. For there was one more, one more regeneration. The one that created a duplicate of you, from a severed hand. The one you sent to live with your Rose in a parallel universe.

_Oh._

You were number thirteen. You were the last. The final life.

The final death.

_Oh._

You—bow-tie you, purple tweed you, fish custard you—are dead, I know that for certain. But there is another thing I know, something I really wish that I didn't.

You may be dead, but that means something much much worse.

The Doctor is dead, too.

•••

Let's return to that night of December 25th, shall we? Your TARDIS had just materialised in the parking lot, I think, along with a lump of solid dread in my stomach.

I unlatched the front door faster than ever, let my feet leap across the snow where they could and forcing them to slow where ice threatened to spin me to the ground. There was no sign of your presence at all; no misplaced music drifting through a crack in the door, no squeaked protest of hinges as both were flung dramatically open, no tall figure attempting a casual pose against the side of the box as you waited.

Nothing.

As I neared, my steps once quick and light but now sinking into weighty plods of uncertain feet, worry only increased. Now a very real and physical mass inside my chest, there was no cajoling or consoling it. Much like the snow or the wind or the frost, it was a fact of nature, and a fact of the moment.

I'd forgotten to rug up against the cold, only shrugged on a jacket and boots before plunging outside. My extremities were now paying the price, the price of razor-sharp wind and stinging flakes of snow. I longed for the warmth and light of the TARDIS, but could not quell the smothering anxiety enough to relinquish its control of my legs.

Step, step, step.

With each one, practically Antarctic water soaked through my tights and the seams of my (supposedly 'weatherproof') shoes. With each one, the TARDIS still stood unmoving, noiseless, as snow piled up around it and darkness leeched the once bright blue into the surrounding air. With each one, unexplained fear grew another limb with which to clutch and claw at my skin.

I stopped. I stared. I waited.

I grew tired of stopping. Staring. Waiting.

And then.

I pulled open the door.

That was the moment my head ran away. Hand in hand with my heart. Off into the killing screams of wind and the dying sighs of snow.

Neither have returned.


	5. Tear Stains and True Names

**A/N Re-uploaded, new and improved. A lot has been changed and added here, so definitely worth a read. ALSO: IMPORTANT NOTE: this fits into canon quite nicely now. Obviously, the Doctor goes to and returns from Trenzalore alone. Maybe you can work out happened there now, and without Clara it's very different to the solution in the canon episode...**

**Happy New Year, and thank you so much for your reviews!**

•••

Sorry about the last few pages.

There was...a mistake.

Hopefully the water hasn't soaked through to any of the other pages...but who am I kidding? You're a goddamn /genius/, however much those childlike quirks attempt to hide it. You know that's not water. You probably licked the paper, or something. Pondered the taste for a minute before frowning, and muttering, _human tears?_

Ignore the words that happen to be legible, won't you? Ignore the stains on the pages. Ignore the frantic pen marks made in my panic to erase the lines. Ignore the tears and cracks in paper, the ones I wracked like wounds and cuts in skin, the ones that bleed ink instead of blood.

Don't try to read it, please. I let myself go for a second there. I let myself write some things I shouldn't have.

You might be wondering what those things might possibly be, seeing as I have already said so much. So much that probably should not have been said, so much that you never would have expected me to say. Good. Keep wondering.

I should tear the pages out, but I can't bear to. It would be like ripping my own ribs from my chest. They need to stay there, even if never read. For protection. But more than that, for a reminder.

I'd apologise for the riddles, but to be honest I'm not especially sorry. This is my book, this is my letter, and this is all me. For you, but not adapted for you, not abridged for you, not dictated by you.

Mostly because you'll never read it anyway.

But also—the lesser reason—because I can't bring myself to care whether or not you do, anymore.

•••

There are many lasts, in life.

In fact, there are infinite lasts. Just as there are infinite firsts. Everything has a first, everything eventually has its last.

That's a rather depressing thought, isn't it? That every single simple and complicated thing _will one day end_. That even any sense of anxiety or trouble caused by this realisation_ will end_. That even the idea of lasts itself _will end_. Perhaps more than 'rather depressing'.

Something I've found is that I have a habit of seeing, cataloguing, and hiding away lasts.

Take my mother, for example. Every time I think about her, there are are three particular thoughts that shoulder their way to the forefront of my mind.

1. The last kiss. This one wasn't even a very long kiss, or even on the lips, or even to me at all. But I still remember it. So much so that the memory's probably warped now, well-worn and smoothed out by many fond (or, initially, angry) recollections. Afternoon sun through a rain-stained window, homework on the kitchen table, my dad frowning at the newspaper. Clock ticking the hours until evening, a shopping list hastily scribbled on the back of a receipt, a woman's call of _"going to the shops, be back in thirty!"_. And then a quick peck on my father's check, and that frown quirked and shone into a smile, just as it always did. And, then, that was it.

2. The last word. A simple one. An easy one. _"Bye"_. Probably wasn't her last _ever_ word to be spoken, but it was the last I heard. Flung casually back through a half-open door, sharp edges whisked away by a gathering wind, leaving only the core of what should have been a farewell like any other. Except it wasn't, and that was another of the lasts.

3. The last breath. This one's imagined, of course. Not with any fantasy or eagerness, definitely not. More like a ragged image while alone in the quiet, the torn threads of a nightmare lingering in a half-awake mind, a shard of darkness and shadow and the morbidity of the human mind. Not so much a physical scene or story, more a feeling. An emotion. An end to the path that one wishes did not exist, but is trod around again and again until footprints mark out boundaries that were once only hearsay. A memory I have conjured for my own agony. The last breath. The last of the lasts.

And those aren't even the least of it. Sometimes there seems like more lasts than firsts, sometimes there are lasts alone, and nothing else.

I have a lot of lasts for you.

The first one, chronologically, is the last time I ever opened the TARDIS doors. In the snow and wind and rain, where your box stood alone and seemingly empty.

It was a shock, to say the least, when I finally pulled open the door. It was a definite shock. After all, you did_ fall right on top of me_.

For a moment there I was pondering a certain remark along the lines of _"one kiss and you think you can go around jumping on top of me!"_ or the like. But all thoughts of words or movement stilled when I realised that the wetness soaking through your coat was not melted snow or the rain of an alien storm.

But blood.

Hot, sticky, burnt crimson _blood_.

The words I might have snapped at you recoiled in my throat, obscuring my windpipe and rising in my chest.

I couldn't breathe for a second there.

It would have taken a miracle to get me moving again, so it is lucky that a miracle is exactly what happened. A small miracle, but also a huge one.

You said, you whispered, a word shorn by harsh breaths, "_Clara_."

That word felt like a stab of ice to my chest, which was exactly what I needed. Even though the whole situation was exactly what I _didn't_. I moved quickly but carefully, shuffling out from under your limp frame and shifting you so your back lay on the snow.

There was too much noise, too much sound, and not the least of it was the screeching wind.

Your eyes were closed, scrunched tightly shut as if to block out any sight of the blood. And there was just _so much of it._

I needed to get you into the TARDIS, that was all I could think. In the TARDIS, to some sort of hospital room. You had to have something like that, right? I needed to get you into the TARDIS. Into the TARDIS. _Into the TARDIS._

I'm sure you've noticed that I'm at least a foot shorter than you and generally only a little more than half your size.

_Into the TARDIS into the TARDIS._

I'm sorry about the next bit. I bet it hurt. A lot. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry for a lot of things.

I hope I didn't dislocate your shoulders either, dragging your unresponsive body over the threshold. Or bruise your spine too much. Or tear open those wounds any further.

Sorry.

What is it about that word? I feel like I shouldn't be writing it. It..._repulses_ me, that's the best—and worst—way to describe it. If anyone, _you_ should be saying sorry. But even if you did, I can't guarantee that I'd believe it. In fact, I know that I wouldn't.

I tried to pretend I didn't want to retch at the sight of the tracks of glistening blood that you left behind on the snow and the TARDIS floor. I tried to pretend my hands weren't trembling when I loosened your bow-tie and tore your waistcoat apart because the buttons were too slippery to battle with. I tried to pretend that the sweaty white of your skin and uneven convulsing of your chest didn't frighten me almost to the point of paralysis.

It seems that Christmas is a night for pretending.

Eventually, I resolved to simply ripping the mutilated fabric from your torso, as blood pumped ever faster through it and my fingers—which had been freezing just a few minutes before, but were now sickly hot and dripping with thick blood. _Your blood._

And when I finally managed to expose the wound to air, the flow only came quicker. I didn't want to think too much about the severity of the situation, as if that would somehow make it more real, more imminent. So I didn't. I didn't think about the blood, or the cuts, or the bruises on your skin. I didn't think about how death already seemed to be lurking at my back. I didn't think about the word carved, so perfectly grotesque, in the skin of your chest.

Or, I tried. I tried so very hard.

And failed, as it seemed I would at many things that day.

The cloying saccharine stench of arterial blood draped over every movement, a morbid metallic backdrop for a scene that would brand itself forever in my mind. And I stared down at you, at my cardigan balled in my fists and soaked with blood in a last gasp attempt at clotting the flow, at the wounds that I could not ever heal.

The word was carved deep into muscle and skin and perhaps organ too, a beautiful cursive that swept and curved in long flourishes that leaked more blood by the second. A taunt, an insult; a careful, graceful script in the blood of the universe's only constant saviour.

Cut perfectly into the skin of a god, the word...

It was your _name_.

I knew what it meant, immediately, without even thinking for a minute. I wasn't sure how I knew it, or what the connection was, but I knew. I'd seen it before, in a book, in a library, in a time that I should have forgotten.

I knew that this was a word never to be spoken, never to be written, never to be thought but by the man who stood under it.

They were letters, yes, but every curve and flourish screeched with meaning, screamed of all that is ancient and powerful and unmovable. It's a strange thing, but I felt almost unworthy to look upon it, this name that was so old and great, this name that dug deep into your very heart, this name that was your roots and your beginnings and your birth.

This name that was you, and not you, because it wasn't _the Doctor._

Perhaps that was how you died, how you were finally killed. And maybe it's just the silly fantasy-fiction-lover in me, but...names have power. Not just in my worlds of paper and printed type.

Do you know of Ursula Le Guinn? Stupid question, I bet you've done shots with her or something, inspired a character or two. We studied her _A Wizard of Earthsea_ in year 8 English last year.

_"Who knows a man's name, holds that man's life in his keeping."_

And, just like that, in the most gruesome, horrific, humiliating way, your name was reduced to the fruit of a blade. And not just that, not just your name, but _the Doctor_ was killed by the very thing he ran from, the very thing he hid from.

_Your name._

And in that moment, I knew without doubt that the man lying before me was, either now or very soon, a dead one.

I doubt you knew what it said, what lines the blood traced across your mutilated chest. Your mind was probably too shattered with agony to comprehend anything but my desperate fingers dancing from wound to wound. But then it wasn't just those cuts that killed you. There was so much more.

Dozens of purple fingerprints, wrapped around your limbs and scraped along your skin. Burnouts blackening the bottoms of your shoes. Red rings circling mottled patches of dead skin on your sides. There was so much, too much.

Now, months later, I can make better sense of it all. Though it is still...still /much too much/. I can put faces to the injuries, names to the hands that tore your eleventh body apart. Weeping angel, Silent, Dalek, Cyberman, a myriad of others. Your long and lasting enemies. So evil, so horrific they must have been formed by the dirty blood that drips through the very wounds in the fabric of this world.

Or, I like to think so, for what they did to you.

There's not a day that I don't wonder, that I don't stare up at the empty sky as if some answer might be written there, not a night when I don't lie awake and ask—over and over—_Where? How? When? Why?_

What hellish planet, what deadened plain spread under your faltering feet, what alien ground tasted the bitter drink of your blood?

What morning, evening, afternoon, what year, what time, what simple moment saw your final dying stand, saw your every adversary claw and tear and strike at you in gleeful degradation and triumph?

How did it come to that, how had you not a last trick up your trick-stuffed sleeves, how could you leave your loves alone, what terrible reason did you have to brave a final death?

And, most of all, _why did you tell them your name?_

I don't know.

I just don't know.

That wasn't just murder, for them. That wasn't just a calculated killing to rid the universe of its saviour. That was a humiliation, a torture session. Whereby every one of your most hated foes could degrade, disgrace and ultimately destroy not just your body but your very image, your very _name_.

They didn't just want to kill you.

They wanted to make sure that you weren't the man you wanted, pretended, tried to be. The man you almost _always_ succeeded at being.

_Never cruel or cowardly._

_Never give up. Never give in._

They wanted to make your death not the Doctor's, but the death of a man who had lived too long and would meet the end he never, ever deserved.

•••

But, of course, that wasn't the end of it.

Of course.

Of course.

•••

**_I am in control. I am in control._**

_I repeat it again._

**_I am in control._**

_I am not in control._

_There is nothing about this situation that even vaguely resembles the definition of 'controlled'._

**_I am in control._**

_And yet I repeat the lie._

_I let it gasp from my lips, even, let it be torn apart by the frantic air before my ears can hear it. Even if they could, I don't think I would comprehend it. I am too busy clinging to the sound of the Doctor's ragged the breaths, the way each one is ripped from his throat with a shudder, the way each one thins out into a inhaled whisper._

_The chill reaches my skin before I even realise what has happened, that the distinctive wheeze of the TARDIS' brakes has not been registered in my mind, that the doors have inched open of their own accord, and that a snowstorm howls for me outside them._

_It is the same snowstorm. It is the same night._

_I let my hands lie flat across your forehead, your cheeks, the sunken skin of your neck. They come back stained with heat and sweat, heat and sweat and blood. My skin is dripping with it, too, almost as much as you are._

_For a moment, it feels like I'm the one who's dying. But that is absurd._

**_Because you are not dying._**

_I grip the slippery ends of your shoes, clench my already aching muscles and inch you along the floor again. I don't know what I'm doing, I don't know why I'm doing it, I don't think I can help you at all..._

**_I am in control._**

_But you need proper doctors for this, you need metres of bandages and compression tape and foil blankets and morphine and surgery and stitches and casts and anaesthetic and god knows what else...and even then, even then, even then..._

**_I am in control._**

_And what do I have? What do I have? I can't even lift you out of the fucking TARDIS! I can't even fly the damn thing to a decent hospital! What help am I, the woman who saves the Doctor, time and time again, if I can't even suppress the urge to vomit up screams and sobs simply at the sight of your blood?_

_Who am I, if I can't do that?_

_Who am I, if I can't save you?_

**_I am in control._**

_Out in the snow, the cold, the real and physical world, my hands fly all across your skin, not knowing exactly where to linger, how to help, how to heal. I'm not a nurse, not a doctor, and I don't think I could do much if I were._

_I place a hand on your cheek. You're still hot, too hot. And just like that_

_I know._

_I lower my shoulder down to the snow—it burns cold against my skin, blood has turned it a deep brown-red—not moving my hand from your jaw. My face is next to yours, your still face, no longer contorted in animal pain, no longer snatching at flimsy breaths._

_Still._

_My fingers inch down to your neck, I don't tell them to. I don't want them to. I don't want to know. I don't want to ever know._

_Two fingers under the jawbone._

_No seconds pass. Or maybe I just aren't there to feel them tick by._

_I could freeze it right here, I could stay in this exact position—curled against your side, close enough to leech some of your fading heat—and never move. The sun could rise, the snow could melt, the trees could grow and be slashed away. And I could stay. Right here. Still._

_Because in this single second, there is still hope._

_Because in this single second, you could still be alive._

_I keep my fingers pressed there as time does not pass. As it can not pass._

_Because I haven't felt your heartbeat yet._

_I don't move._

_Not one millimetre._

_I stare at the dead murmur on your lips. Remembering the last word they shaped._

**_"Clara."_**

_I think that, perhaps, my eyes close. Or perhaps Death closes them for me, because when I wake, He's taken you with him. __When I wake, I'm paralysed by cold, by shock, by sticky dried blood. My hand lies out on the snow before me, clutching at nothing. My every thought is a physical pain in my chest, a thumping weight of fear, of dread, of horror, of excruciating sorrow. An emotion so potent, so agonisingly heavy in every limb, every shorn-off memory, that any names are unfit to be assigned to it._

_I don't have thoughts. I don't have words._

_I have only the empty space—like missing a step on the stairs, like that half-second of terror amplified to an unimaginable scale—the blank place in the air, the vacant spot in my clutching arms._

_I have only the ghost, and where_ _you used to be._


	6. Silent Snow and Walking Away

**A/N Took me a while to determine what sort of ending I was going to give this. In the end, this was the only one that really fit (sorry). In this last chapter, we also find out why exactly the Doctor did not return. Must have watched the Time of the Doctor, probably, for it to really make sense. Also, Happy New Year, everyone, I'll be so grateful if you'd drop me one last review. And without further ado, let us revisit the song that inspired this fic in the first place. Now it reminds me of the Christmas special, so prepare for tears. **

**_Christmas Lights - Coldplay_**

_Christmas night, another fight_  
_Tears we cried, a flood_  
_Got all kinds of poison in, poison in my blood_

_Took my feet to Oxford Street, trying to right a wrong_  
_Just walk away those windows sing_  
_But I can't believe he's gone_

_When you're still waiting for the snow to fall_  
_It doesn't really feel like Christmas at all_

_Up above candles on air flicker_  
_Oh they flicker and they flow_  
_And I am up here holding on to all those chandeliers of hope_  
_And like some drunken in this city_  
_I go singing out of tune_  
_Singing how I've always loved you, darling_  
_And I always will_

_Oh when you're still waiting for the snow to fall_  
_It doesn't really feel like Christmas at all_  
_Still waiting for the snow to fall_  
_It doesn't really feel like Christmas at all_

_Those Christmas lights_  
_Light up the streets_  
_Down where the sea and city meet_  
_May all your troubles soon be gone_  
_Oh Christmas lights, keep shining on_

_Those Christmas lights_  
_Light up the streets_  
_Maybe they'll bring him back to me_  
_Then all my troubles will be gone_  
_Oh Christmas lights, keep shining on._

_Oh Christmas lights_  
_Light up the streets_  
_Light up the fireworks in me_  
_May all your troubles soon be gone_

_Those Christmas lights keep shining on._

_•••_

I used to think, once, that sadness melts, like snow.

I used to think, once, that sadness could be cured.

How silly, how naive, how utterly _childish_ those young thoughts seem to me now. How could I have lived through a third of my life, or of what I thought was to be such a thing, how could I have felt so old—sometimes in body, and often in mind—and yet still, in actuality, have been such a truly ignorant, innocent young _child_?

How lucky some are to live as that child for all of their years, no matter how long. How lucky some are to never truly grow old.

How unlucky, am I.

Some days I can sink myself into those young thoughts, those fluid memories. Some days I can rethink them, re-remember them, through the eyes that I used to gaze through. Some days I can even pretend—because that's all it is, pretending, that's all most of my life has boiled down to—that I'm still that person.

Some days I can look in the mirror and see the woman—no, not the woman, the _child_ who once lived in that same face.

The child who lived in the attic room of a family that was not hers but might as well have been, lived in and of an unfillable hole, an irreplaceable loss.

The child who immersed herself in so many thousands of ink-and-paper worlds that the one she inhabited ceased to be enough.

The child who harboured a hidden wish, a wild desire to roam to the very furthest corners and the very deepest crevices; a wish that time had begun to erode away with all its realities and lies, both of which are often the same.

The child who wanted to see the best that her own world had to offer, just to convince herself that it was enough, that she needed nothing else, that her desperate longing for something more was just a flimsy fantasy, easily quelled, easily doused with the wave of what was _real_.

The child who met the most incredible man, with the most incredible promise, the most incredible world at his feet; a man who needed her too much, but also, a man who it was too easy too need.

The child who lied to herself again and again, more pretences, more untruths, more words left unsaid; the child who constantly repeated that she was fine, she was fine, she was not in too deep, she was not running away, she was not denying the noose around her neck...

We are subjected to all kinds of lies.

Falsehoods, half-truths, omissions, twistings of actuality. Our world is built upon them, and thrives off of them. They are threaded into every aspect of our lives.

They start off small in childhood—in appearance, at least. Lies like _"broccoli is delicious"_ or _"you'll make friends"_ or _"of course I believe in Santa Claus!"_. And then even more, as one begins to see the shadows that used to be invisible, these commonly insisted by a parent in false comfort: _"mummy always knows best!"_ and _"you can be anything you want to"_ and _"monsters don't exist"_ and even _"I will always come and find you"_.

As years pass, the lies only multiply, strengthen as others fade away. And then we begin to fashion lies for ourselves, we begin to consciously ignore the truths, we begin to hide them away from others. That's what growing older does to you, that's what each new year means. One step further, one inch deeper into the void of never-ending lies that we don't seem to want to—much less be able to—fight against.

I listed them, once. The biggest ones. I wrote them down in a fit of ragged emotion and clinging insomnia, on one of many nights such like it. The ones others told me, the ones you told me, the ones _I_ told me. I've copied them down, here. Even now, even after all this time, I cringe at my younger self.

Lie number one: _Life is a beautiful journey._

I laugh, now, at the sight of that. I laugh and laugh and laugh and it's hard to stop. I laugh, though the laughter sounds like that of a madman. Probably that's because I am one. Probably that's because it's just so funny. Inexplicably hilarious, in all its wrongness, in all its melancholia. It's hard to tell the difference between laughs and sobs anymore.

Lie number two:_ I am in control of myself._

This one's rather amusing, too. Just—_sidesplitting_. I used to repeat it often, it was my mantra, a constant string of words always beating away at the back of my head. So when it seemed like nothing was under my control, nor even could be, I would still know that I held myself in a strong grasp. When people died, when others were lost, when connections faded or were ripped away, when fires built and voices clamoured, when there was nothing for me to do about it: _I control myself. I control myself. I control myself._

Oh, how naïve was I but a year ago.

Lie number three: _The Doctor will not leave._

That was what I needed, what I wanted, wasn't it? Someone who wouldn't leave. Someone I wouldn't have to lose, like I've lost my mother, like I've lost the person my father used to be. You seemed to be perfect: unchanging, undying, if a little unstable and in possession of a time machine, constantly shadowed by an abyss of everything that might whisk you away at any moment. But I still thought you would stay. I still deluded myself with hopes of you and I.

Lie number four: _I can stop lying._

Lying is wearisome, each false word and masking sentence lays yet another brick around you, until the world must shout for you to hear it, until you must scream for it to hear you. Maybe I could even stop lying to _you_, I thought, perhaps. We could stop darting back and forth from each other and start...I mean, stop pretending, at any rate. This one, for want of a kinder word—_bullshit_.

There are so many more, hundreds upon hundreds of lies. But five is all I listed, on one of those mad nights in which I let my mind run unfettered. Five little phrases to tear down my mind, word by word, letter by letter.

Lie number five: _sadness melts._

It was one of those silly things, those fantastical thoughts that flitter through a mind wrought with grief and winter fever. Risen out of painful memories and the wistfulness of the season.

_Like snow,_ I thought. _Like snow._

I'd had plenty of experience with the emotion to think about it, and I knew that sadness was cold. Not just cold—that it was searing in negative heat, that it stung against your skin and creeped into every crevice. That it could whip you and win you in a wild frenzy, so hard and huge and ferocious it was easy to believe that it would never stop, never cease, and it would keep you in its icy claws forevermore. I used to think, too, that—no matter how what—it would always drift away; always morph into the wet, slick drops of cooling rain, always melt with the spring sun and the summer smiles. I used to think that such an emotion was only temporary, and though it may return with each onslaught of winter, it could be endured til its end. I thought that it could be a beautiful thing, even, a thing of nostalgia and times and people past. I thought that grief, that loss, that sadness—in all its forms —would always be a looming shadow, but one that shied away from light, one that grew as a part of you, one that could never truly take you for its own.

I look at my old self, and know. God, I was nothing if not a sentimental, wanderlusting, idiotic _fool_.

For sadness is not a thing of wild nature, not a thing to hide from behind walls and comforts and memories until the salvation of the spring melt.

I know, now. I am no longer a child. I no longer believe in those stories, those worlds, those _lies_.

Sadness does not melt, sadness is nothing like snow, for there is none falling now. Not this night, not this eve of the darkest and brightest day of the year. Not this last hour before the day of joy, turned day of only death.

Because I'm here, sitting on a bench with my coat and my gloves and a knitted hat, watching anxious parents rush out of empty toy stores, watching a dark starry sky dulled by the thousands of lights adorning every eave and awning, watching my hand dart and still across the page of a book that should never have been written.

And this time, there is no snow.

There is only silence.

And that is what grief is. Because everything returns to it. No matter the singing, the shouting, the laughing, the words. No matter the wind gusts, the bird songs, the scatter of rain.

It all just fades away.

And, if you think about it, sound is such a tiny part of this universe. You can't hear in space, there are no particles for the vibrations to travel through. There's no medium for noise.

There's no medium for joy.

It all just fades away.

And all that's left, at the end, after life, after death, after the explosion of suns and the crashing of planets, after the ageing of monsters and the forgetting of names, after everything, just as it was at the beginning, there is only silence.

In the end, there is only silence.

In the end, there is only grief.

•••

You probably have myriads of things to compare sadness to. Being you. Being the Doctor. I know, don't I know?

My losing you once can never compare to your losing hundreds. Some more than once. I'm not you, I'm not your age, I'm not your memories. But, I'm _me_. I'm _Clara_. And sometimes it feels like the years are stretched out behind me, falling away in the thousands, while I can see nothing but black before my nose. Sometimes it feels like I've lived hundreds of lives all in one, hundreds of times while in the same second, hundreds of places in only my small corner of a single country.

Sometimes, I feel like _you_.

It has been many many times that you have been labelled a god, Doctor, and there will be more in future. Because he is a part of you, that god, and you are a part of him. You call yourself a man—and that is what I see you as—but the truth is that there are so many millions who call you a deity, a divine spirit, a supreme being.

They say that God—the one I have been told of, anyway, as the one who is real might not exist, and the one who I believe in doesn't—made humans in his image. It's an interesting sentiment, that such a being would create us—us lowly, selfish people—just as He was made. I don't know. Maybe it's true. Maybe it's not just a sentiment. I don't know. But if you are a god, as so many believe that you are, then you are just the same.

I didn't want to have to rely on you. I didn't want to have to cling to you, for fear of fading. I didn't want to have to be afraid of your leaving. I didn't want to love you, not at all, and I really, _really_ did not want to **need** you. Because I knew that you needed me, and I knew that you needed all those who came before me. And I knew that that needing was destroying you, day by day, loss by loss.

But I failed.

(I love you.)

(I need you.)

And if God made humans in his image (as the story goes, but I've lived too long in stories), then you took Clara Oswald, however unknowingly, and made her in your own.

•••

Sat on this frosty wooden bench, cracked with years of similar below-zero days and marked with dozens of similar restless thinkers (the difference being that they were armed with rebelliousness and Sharpies), it is harder than you would think to believe that tonight is Christmas Eve.

This is supposed to be a night of waiting, of quiet and shining anticipation. Supposed to be a night of hanging stockings on the windowsill, a night of setting out a glass of milk and some ginger snaps. A night for children willing themselves to sleep, for hope of a quick leap to the happy spoils of the morning. A night for teenagers listening to the crinkles of wrapping paper, the murmurs of parents, the rustle of pine; and then grinning alone at a darkened ceiling. A night for remembrance and celebration of times and people past, calling them into being before the day in which they would be re-loved, re-cherished. A night of joyful longing and careful wanting, of truths and kisses and dancing fingertips. A night of so many things, for so many people, and yet...

And yet I feel none of it. None of it, at all.

And I see things, behind the flickers of closed eyelids, behind the sea of sky, behind the skeletons of crooked trees.

I remember.

I wanted to go to the forest (you know, _that_ one), even though the roads would be sprawling car parks, and the short trek through the trees would freeze my toes off of my feet. But...it's _Christmas_. What am I to do with myself, what am I to say? How am I to scrape through this day, for lack of joyous memories strung along beside it?

And besides, I am not yours. And you are not mine. I should be long over you, long forgotten you, long laid you to rest in some coffin of faraway stars.

Because my life is moving. It's moving even when I am not. Sometimes it's sprinting, bounding and flying ever onward, yanking at my fingers til they ache as it pulls me along behind.

Because I'm growing, I'm changing, I'm aging. That's one thing I can't stop, not like you do.

Everyone else is growing too.

There's Evelyn, the art teacher at school, who always brings me hot tea and a handful of good humour when I'm stressing over three classes' worth of Shakespeare essays. There's Cam, he's the barista at the cafe just down the street from my flat, and never fails to procure half-price shots of caffeine when I stumble in at six after a sleepless night. Peter, the boy slumped alone at the back of year 11 literature, silent and unmoving but for the careful fingers that turn the pages of the novel he's hiding under his desk. And Linda, one of the cleaning ladies who's always up for a chat, even if it's all gossip and rumour to keep my mind in the material. There's Grace, too, who teaches bio and a bit of chemistry, who keeps the staff room alive with the youth that I struggle to provide. The three girls who sit at the front of my year 7 class, always asking the most curious of questions, laughing amongst themselves with an innocence I long for, staying after class to chat about the holidays and whatever else is news. And Alex, the white-haired, white-faced neighbour who's always knocking on my door to ask if I might retrieve the stepladder from the top shelf, or change the batteries in the smoke alarm, or explain to him how his new phone works without a cord. And more, more, more people who I am slowly slotting in besides; more, more, more people fastening me down.

There's so much to this life. And I am beginning to feel myself, ever so slowly, ever so painfully, falling in love with it.

(It's a familiar feeling)

Perhaps that's why there's grief, frustration, a ferocious rage in me, instead of the blissful anticipation that should come with this day.

Perhaps that's why I'm so much more angry than simply sad, why I'm so much more likely to throw any reminder of you at the wall 'til it shatters instead of clutch it to me and sob.

Because I'm living.

(I hate you)

I'm living, I'm loving, I'm losing.

(But I don't, not really, I never have, not ever)

I'm living.

(I hate myself)

Without you.

•••

I think I've decided.

I say 'think', because I really haven't decided at all. But the thought of a decision sounds a lot more grounding than the absence of one.

I _think_ I've decided what to do.

I _think_ I've decided to keep going.

I _think_ I've decided that you've left, or died, or faded away.

I _think_ I've decided that you're never coming back.

There. That's it. Done. It's out there.

You're never going to come back for me.

That's all there is.

That's all there's always been.

It's just taken me a stupidly long while to wrap my stubborn old brain around that fact.

Did you know my dad wanted to send me into therapy? He thought I was going mad. I probably was. I probably still am. The difference now is, I can hide it. I can pretend, just like I always used to. But, also, horribly, I can forget.

Not that I'll ever let myself. But I can. I _could_.

It's been...how long has it been now? Since I wrote that last, the one about Christmas and my new 'life'? Years, it's been. This entry is my first one in _years_. No, _decades_. It feels like centuries, though. It feels like millennia.

In all that time, this book's just been sitting there, just lying in that big old chest in that gnarled old tree beside that plump old stump in that sad old forest.

In all that time, you haven't come back. I knew you wouldn't. I always knew. But I could never accept it, simply because I didn't know _why_.

I still don't know why. Did you die, like I thought you would? Did you regenerate, somehow? Did you run away, forget me?

No. I know you. I know you better than you ever thought I could. You wouldn't forget me.

But I'm biased, of course. I'll never forget you, and it can't just work one way, can it? No. I know you. I know you.

I _knew_ you.

This is the very last time I'll write in this, I think. Can you see how shaky, how faint my handwriting is? Arthritis. Yes, imagine that, Clara Oswald living long enough to get arthritis in her fingers. I know you hate it when people you love grow old. But it's a fact of life, death is. It's a fact of everything.

It's a fact of me.

So, I'll say it again. I _think_ I've decided. I _think_ I've decided what I'm going to do. I'm going to stop coming back here, for one. The trek makes my back ache. For two, I'm going to stop rereading this book/letter/plea for nothing. Third, I'm going to stop checking the pages for notes, for finger marks, for any sign that you might have been here. Fourth, I'm going to dig out the TARDIS key from the bottom of my wardrobe and leave it here in the chest, let it freeze. And fifth...

Fifth, I'm going to place this book back in the chest, fasten it up, double check the Gallifreyan, sweep my eyes over the spot where you last lay...

And then...

And then...

I think I'll walk away.

**-:-**

_**Clara. Clara Oswald. Clara Oswald.**_

_**I have no excuses. I have no apologies. I have nothing.**_

_**I haven't even you.**_

_**I suppose there's no point trying to explain, not now, for there's no one to write to. As you so poetically put it, there's no one listening under the skin of these pages, there's no one waiting on the other side of this book. Always the English teacher, always the literary one, eh? Clara Oswald.**_

_**I'm not one for sentimentality, usually. I just run and try as best as I can to forget. But not for you, I don't think. Never for you. The girl who breaks all my rules. Impossible Clara Oswald.**_

_**So, I write this. After returning to this spot as you always hoped I would. As I was always going to.**_

_**This will not help—of course not, you're gone, aren't you? But it wouldn't help anyway—but I did not mean to abandon you. I never even considered it, not for a second. I was dying. All I considered was you. And death itself, certainly, but that was only a lesser, weaker thought.**_

_**I regenerated. You won't believe it. I'm alive. Actually, properly. I'm alive.**_

_**And you're not?**_

_**It strikes me how similar this reads, my writing to yours. You, writing to a dead Doctor. Me, writing to a dead...you.**_

_**I can't even say that I'm sorry. Though I am. I'm more sorry than I've ever been, and that is quite a lot. But I sill can't say it. I don't deserve to say it.**_

_**It was the Time Lords, Clara. It was the Time Lords. We saved them, we really did. For a while. For a little while.**_

_**If I must say anything about it, about why I left, why I am here, why I never returned, it is this: the Last Great Time War did not turn out to be the Last. Nor the Greatest, if you can ever call wars 'great'.**_

_**The time distortions were violent enough to ripple across the whole of the universe, just like the last time. Daleks and Time Lords burning together at the centre of it, and me.**_

_**It's always me, Clara. It's always me.**_

_**And you, too, for a little while. Until I left. Until everything fell to pieces as it does again and again and again.**_

_**So, Trenzalore burned. And with it the Time Lords and Daleks alike. Most of them. I hope. But the embers sparked fires elsewhere, all around the universe, even here. Even twenty first century Earth. Even with you.**_

_**It took me years to even land the TARDIS here, in this time, and by now...well, I've missed you, haven't I? I've missed you, and I've missed you in the other sense, too. Frankly, 'missing' is a direly inadequate word. But you probably know that. You **_**definitely**_** know that.**_

_**Oh, look, I'm doing it again. Silly Doctor. Talking to a ghost. Silly Clara. Talking to a man she only thought was one.**_

_**Clara Oswald, I'm glad you lived. Thank you for that. Thank you for living. Thank you for you.**_

_**I'm sorry for me.**_

_**There's another thing, too, something I never got to say. Something I hope you noticed. In fact, I bet you did. Clever Clara, of course you noticed. Did I kiss your forehead one too many times? Did I smile at you too long and too often? I knew that was a dead giveaway. Couldn't stop myself. Didn't particularly want to.**_

_**I never got to say it, never will, now. I hope you know. Knew. **_**Knew**_**. See, I'm doing it too. The tenses thing. It makes my head ache almost as much as my heart does.**_

_**Ooh, that was poetic of me. You would've liked that. Very dramatic. Very English-teacher-y.**_

_**Now, I can't say sorry, however much I yearn to. Sorry fixes nothing. I can't make anything better now. I can't talk to ghosts, although this is my desperate way of trying. So I'll say only this: thank you.**_

_**Thank you, Clara Oswald. Always, thank you. Thank you for living. Thank you for keeping me alive.**_

_**Thank you for everything. I can say that forever, and it still won't be enough. I never deserved you, but thank you despite that.**_

_**This has turned into something wildly melancholic, sentimental, and overall uncharacteristic, but you need the truth. You need the realities, as best as I can lay them out. You need the truths, because you lived too many lies.**_

_**You were right, in the end. I could never run from you, I could never forget you. And I won't start now.**_

_**I'll run, as always, but **_**with**_** you, Clara Oswald. I'll run, and, above all, above everything, I'll remember.**_

_**Clara Oswald, I'll remember.**_

_**—the Doctor**_

_**26th December, 2172.**_


End file.
